Peter Tahourdin was born in southern England in 1928. He studied composition with Richard Arnell at Trinity College of Music in London, graduating in 1952. In the years that followed, various concert and broadcast performances of his music were given in England, Holland and Canada.
Tahourdin came to Australia in 1964 and was appointed visiting composer to the University of Adelaide. The following year he was commissioned by the Australian Ballet to compose the score for Illyria, which was first produced, with choreography by Garth Welch, at the 1966 Adelaide Festival of Arts – it was later to appear on television.A long-standing interest in electronic music led him to undertake a year’s course of study at Toronto University in Canada. On returning to Adelaide he became active as a composer, lecturer and broadcaster, and he established the first practical course in electronic music in Australia at the University of Adelaide in 1969.
He was appointed to the staff of the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne in 1973, first as lecturer, then senior lecturer, in composition. During the two years 1978-79 he was chairman of the Composers’ Guild of Australia. His compositional output stems from a variety of commissions and interests, ranging from orchestral and chamber music to choral, electronic and educational music, as well as music for the theatre.
The five symphonies stand at critical points in Tahourdin’s career and are markedly different from one another, both in structure and in content. Equally, his chamber music reflects his changing approach to musical composition – from the tonal Clarinet Sonata (1962) through the four Dialogues (1971-84) and the Quartet for Strings (1982), all of which are concerned with the notion of direct yet varied interplay between the performers, to the Raga Music series (1985-88), which takes its structural base from procedures that underlie the unfolding of the raga in north Indian classical music.
In his electronic music Tahourdin is concerned with modern technology as an added resource that carries with it its own aesthetic and may be used in its own right (Three Mobiles – 1974), as a means of shaping and controlling other musical resources (San Diego Canons – 1983), or as one element within a more complex whole (Ern Malley – A Dramatic Testament – 1976).
https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/article/peter-tahourdin-1928-2009
CLARINET SONATA
The Clarinet Sonata (1962) by British-Australian composer Peter Tahourdin is an early chamber work. Written in England and premiered in London by New Zealand clarinettist John McCaw, it marks a traditional, tonal approach to composition that predates his later, more avant-garde works.
MUSIC
By Peter Hellstrom
The opening musical performance of the Festival Of Perth at 3 pm tomorrow week will be a free recital of contemporary Australian chamber music in the A.B.C. Basil Kirke studio. The festival committee is to be congratulated on the emphasis it has given this year to Australian music. As a result of its cooperation with the Fellowship of Australian composers, 14 of the 55 composers represented in the Festival are Australian. The opening recital is by the Oriel Quartet with which will appear pianist Alice Carrard, violinist John Exton and clarinettist Jack Harrison. Many of the works will be given their first W.A. performances. They include Sydney composer Peter Sculthorpe’s sixth string Quartet, Colin Brumby’s Trio for clarinet violin and piano and Peter Tahourdin ’s Clarinet and Piano Sonata. West Australian compositions will include Jennifer Fowler’s String Trio and Ashley Arbuckle’s Movements for String Trio. [1]
7 AUSTRALIANS IN PROGRAMME
By Sally Trethowan
29th January 1967
A free concert and the first of the music in this year’s Festival of Perth, which is offering principally music by Viennese and Italian composers, was a recital of contemporary Australian chamber music yesterday afternoon in the Basil Kirke Studio. Though the symbolical free-and-first might be seen as a sort of declaration of faith on behalf of the festival organisers, the Australian-music-at-any-price faction should feel satisfied after a two hour program of seven works by seven composers. However, there are some people, and I am one of them, who believe that a self-conscious offering of Australian music in one parcel as it were is probably not the best method of asserting its quality. Music should be listened to on its own merits regardless of the nationality or domicile of its composer. One of the most moving and satisfying things for an audience must be to watch a composer playing his own work. At yesterday’s concert, Dr John Exton played the violin part of his “Fantasy for Violin and Piano” with Alice Carrard playing the piano part. Dr Exton’s Fantasy is the product of a highly intelligent disciplined mind. From a single musical cell, the work evolves in continual parthenogenesis, gathering emotional tension till it logically works itself out full-cycle. Peter Sculthorpe’s Sixth String Quartet performed by the Oriel String Quartet is tense, nerve fraught music strongly indebted in technique to Bartok, though lacking both that composer’s emotional fire and his intellect. Felix Verder’s “Five Fantasias for String Trio” were deep browed music that even in quick passages exercised levity, the instrumental lines convoluted in prescribed patterns of discordant chromaticism. Two of the younger W.A. composers were represented Ashley Arbuckle by an aortic set of Nine Miniatures for String Trio, and Jennifer Fowler by an expressive well-wrought String Trio. “Strophe for clarinet violin and piano” a set of epigrammatic Variations a la Webern, by turns reflective and capricious, composed by Victorian Colin Brumby, was an agreeable foil for the other clarinet work, a Sonata by Peter Tahourdin. This engaging music played with gusto by Jack Harrison, clarinet and Alice Carrard, piano, employees a comparatively old-fashioned idiom, is strongly lyrical, repetitious and has a freshness and sparkle that glances back to Weber rather than Webern with whom most of the other composers have affiliations. One cannot praise too highly the scholarly analysis and program annotations of David Tunley and John Exton.
| 29.1.1967 | Peter Tahourdin Clarinet Sonata (1962) PERTH PREMIERE | Jack Harrison (clarinet) Alice Carrard (piano) | Festival of Perth Free Studio Recital Basil Kirke Studio A.B.C. Adelaide Terrace, Perth, Western Australia |
[1] The West Australian January 21 1967 page 35